The Flames of Shadam Khoreh (The Lays of Anuskaya) (29 page)

Goeh held his hand up. “I believe you, but they do not. They believe…” Goeh paused, pursing his lips, as if searching for the right words. “This is difficult to explain. Your questions woke in Safwah memories she didn’t recall having beforehand. You saw how inquisitive she was with you, and I hope the reason is now clear. You tapped into memories that she now believes were stolen from her when this woman left.”

Atiana shook her head. “The one we look for is twelve, perhaps thirteen.”

Goeh shrugged. “Perhaps she’s the one you’re searching for and perhaps she isn’t, but she had another with her. A quiet young man that fits your description of Nasim.”

“What did he look like? Did she describe him?”

“She did not,” Goeh replied easily, “and she won’t. Not until she’s convinced your intentions are pure.”

“We’ve come to find the Atalayina. We’ve come to find those who can help to save this world.”

Again Goeh raised his hand. “Safwah needs assurances, and she won’t get it from your words alone. Among our people, when there is doubt as to someone’s honesty or faith, there is a ritual we perform. The one in doubt sits in a smokehouse with the elders, and together, they take of tūtūn. Do you know of it?”

Soroush nodded his head. “It’s a special form of tabbaq that makes one … open to suggestion.”

Goeh tilted his head, a half agreement. “Open to suggestion,
yeh
, but more importantly, open to telling the truth.”

“It
forces
one to tell the truth,” Soroush countered.

Again Goeh tilted his head. His expression was one of pained regret, as though he felt the characterization of the tabbaq—and so his people—improper. “Truth is a quality we strive for. But there are times when we lie even to ourselves. Is it not so? Tūtūn allows us to find truths, even those that are buried deep within us.”

“And you wish us to take it?” Atiana asked.

Goeh turned to her. “One will suffice.” As he said these words, Atiana knew it wasn’t a matter of them choosing amongst themselves who should go. The Kohori elders had already chosen, and it was clear from Goeh’s dark gaze that they’d chosen her. A chill ran through her at the thought, not because she was afraid of what they would learn about her, but what she would learn about herself.

Before she could answer, Nikandr stepped in. “We won’t do it,” he said. “We’ve not harmed the people of Kohor. The elders should be grateful we’ve come, for ours is a story born of the desert, born of these people. Why should we be paid with suspicion and mistrust?”

“I would not put it so,” Goeh replied evenly, though it was clear from his expression he hadn’t taken kindly to Nikandr’s words.

“
Neh
?” Nikandr asked. “How would you put it?”

“My people value our history. We are part of this land and it is a part of us. We have not often stepped beyond the boundaries of the Gaji, and the last time we did so in any significant way was the exodus to Ghayavand.” He motioned widely with his hand, indicating the wide basin in which Kohor was centered. “Many left this valley and the world was nearly destroyed because of it. It is a stain upon us, one we are not yet free of, and we will not be distracted from our cause again.”

“And what cause is that?” Nikandr asked.

“Our secrets are our own,” Goeh replied easily.

“You speak from both sides of your mouth, Goeh. You ask us to speak truth—you demand it—and yet you’ll give no answers of your own.”

“It is you that have come to this place asking for our help.”

“We’ll leave, then, if you’ll offer no help to those who are trying to protect you.”

Goeh smiled wanly. “Sadly, leaving is no longer a choice open to you. The Kohori have saved your life thrice now. Each of you owes us much. Too much. So we will have our answers, Nikandr of Khalakovo, whether you agree to it or not.”

Nikandr stood. “Now you threaten us?”

Goeh stood as well. He towered over Nikandr, but Nikandr didn’t move an inch. “We do what we must,” Goeh said.

“Please,” Atiana said, standing as well.

Nikandr raised his palm to her. “Atiana, sit down.”

“I will not,” she said, turning to Goeh. “I will take the tūtūn, Goeh.”

“You will not!” Nikandr said.

“I will!” Atiana replied, her blood running hot now. “What are more questions when we’ve already told them the truth?”

Nikandr’s hands bunched into fists until his forearms shook. “This is intimidation! Coercion. I won’t stand for it!”

“If they asked you more questions, would you not answer them?”

“This is different.”

“Why? Because they’re asking it of me?”

“It is different”—his tone and the set of his jaw made it clear he felt this a deep betrayal on her part—“because they are not asking. They are demanding, and we’ve done nothing to deserve it.”

“I’m going, Nischka, whether you approve of it or not.”

Nikandr’s head reeled back. The hurt was plain in his eyes and on the sun-kissed skin of his face, and suddenly she felt as though the two of them were the only ones in the room. “Is
this
what we’ve come to?” he asked.

He was right to feel hurt, not because she’d volunteered to take the tūtūn, but because she’d been reticent about speaking to him of what had happened in the hills of the Gaji. She’d performed the rituals of the wodjan, thereby subverting her own beliefs and the teachings of the Matri. And then she’d hidden it from him, refusing to reveal the truth when she knew she should. Even here in Kohor she’d declined to speak of it, for she couldn’t quite find the words. It wasn’t something she was ready to face.

And now she’d agreed to reveal all these secrets to the Kohori, for surely this would come out in the ritual they would perform.

She strode forward until Nikandr was forced to turn toward her, and more importantly turn
away
from Goeh. She placed a hand on his chest and spoke to him in the same way he had—as though they were the only two there. “I’m sorry, Nischka. I should have told you all. And I will. But let me go with Goeh. We know now that Nasim and Kaleh were here. Let me take us beyond this place so that we can find them, or at the very least the Atalayina. Your pride, my pride, is not what’s important now. What’s important is that we move on, because the more days that go by the more the world slips from our grasp. I can feel it, and I know you can as well. So I will go, and I will put the elders at ease.”

Nikandr stared down into her eyes. He stared deeply, and though there was hurt there, she could see in him the love he’d had for her since she’d arrived on Khalakovo those many years ago. She loved him as well. True, there were divides between them, but they would be bridged—of this she was sure.

Nikandr licked his lips. He glanced up at Soroush and Goeh, and then nodded to Atiana.

“When?” Atiana asked Goeh.

“At sunset.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

The walk to the western end of the village felt strange. The Kohori—at least near where they’d been housed for the past seven days—were so often hidden away, but tonight, as the sun neared the mountains far to the west, they stood in doorways, they watched from windows, making Atiana feel as though they were stripping her bare so that by the time she reached her destination, she would be all but defenseless, both physically and mentally.

Goeh led her, weaving among the redbrick homes, passing the tall obelisk in the village circle. Just as the sun slipped behind the mountains, they reached the edge of the village proper and entered the desert itself. Atiana didn’t understand at first where Goeh was taking her. She thought perhaps they would smoke beneath the stars in the immensity of this desert plain, but then she saw it, a hut of some kind, dark and hidden against the backdrop of the dark mountains and the burning copper sky.

The crunching sound of her footsteps against the rocky soil made her feel small and alone and, strangely, more exposed than she’d felt in the village. She didn’t like offering herself up to this sort of questioning. She’d been raised in the halls of power. Not until her time on Khalakovo, when Soroush and Rehada had caused the death of the Grand Duke Stasa Bolgravya, had she felt any slip in the control she’d grown to expect. She’d faced that challenge as well as she could, but she’d wondered in the weeks that followed the Battle of Uyadensk if she was made from the same cloth that others seemed to be made of—like Nikandr, or Nikandr’s mother, Saphia, or even Nikandr’s dead Aramahn lover, Rehada.

Atiana had hated Rehada when she’d first met her, not only because she was Nikandr’s lover, but because she was everything Atiana was not. Open. Daring. Welcoming of whatever the fates had in store for her. For years after leaving Khalakovo, Atiana had had difficulty in trying to do more for Vostroma, more for the Grand Duchy. She’d done what she could, but there had always been something inside her that wanted her to pull back.

That had all changed on Galahesh. She knew the very moment the change had come. When she’d been assumed by Sariya, and when she’d assumed Sariya in return, she’d learned much of what Sariya was like. There were some of the things she’d seen in Rehada: confidence, a calm surety that what she was doing was right, a willingness to not only take what the fates would give her, but to forge her own path. Atiana hadn’t known it at the time, but those moments with Sariya had been a catalyst that had changed Atiana.

It was this, more than anything, that allowed her to set her fears aside and embrace what lay ahead. The memories of the Kohori watching her from their windows and doorways faded. Her feelings of discomfort dwindled until all that remained was an uncomfortable twinge somewhere deep in her stomach. If this was a trap, then so be it, and woe betide the men and women who’d brought it about.

“How many will question me?” she asked Goeh.

Goeh glanced her way. “Does it matter?”

“Does it matter if I know?”

He chuckled, a sound like the earth must make when it laughs. “Four others will question you, Atiana of Anuskaya. Four others, and you will make five. A propitious number. Do not fear over what they will ask of you. It’s best if you let the tūtūn embrace you.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then it will fight you. Believe me when I say that this is a fight you will not win.”

These words didn’t sit well with Atiana, but she kept a steady, trudging pace toward the hut. As they came closer she saw it for what it was—no hut at all, but more of a thicket, a mass of vines wound so tightly that she could barely see the light coming from within, even when she was mere paces away. At first it reminded her of something the Aramahn dhoshaqiram, masters of the spirits of life, might have created, but as Goeh ducked his head and stepped inside, she realized she was wrong. This did not look like it had been made with magic, as many of the wondrous creations of the Aramahn did, but rather as if it had been tended by hand to look just as it did. It lent the simple structure a feeling of acceptance and forbearance that the works of the Aramahn did not have.

When she ducked inside, she found a small coal fire at the center of the hut. As Goeh had said, there were four others, all of them women. Safwah was among them, her grey eyes piercing, the golden chains running from her ear to her pierced nose shining under the light of the coals. She seemed every bit as fierce as she’d been in the village. The others were no different. It felt like a tribunal for crimes she hadn’t known she committed—quite the difference from the way Goeh had described it.

There was something reassuring about them, however. They reminded her of the Matri, and in this she found comfort.

After motioning Atiana to sit on a pillow near the fire, Goeh opened a wooden box near the wall. Within was a lumpy substance that looked like decomposed leaves. It smelled that way as well, but when Goeh sprinkled it over the fire, a scent like autumn fires and fresh-cut cedar and vanilla and chestnuts filled the air. The scent was heady. Much of the smoke trailed up and out through the many small holes between the vines, but when Goeh took a folded blanket, and threw it over the outside of the hut, the air became thick with it.

Atiana’s stomach became queasy, and at first she thought she was going to throw up under the critical stares of these old matrons, but the feeling ebbed, and she began to feel wider, and deeper somehow. Her awareness expanded to fill this small space, to fill the space beyond, until she felt as though she were looking down upon this valley, down upon the world.

When she heard words being spoken, she had no idea who had uttered them. She thought at first it was her mother, but she wasn’t here, was she? Mother was home, on Vostroma.

She heard herself answer, though she didn’t even know what had been asked. She knew from her answers that they were asking her of her past, of her life on the islands before she had met Nasim and Sariya and Muqallad. She gave answer after answer, but for the life of her she couldn’t hear them asking the questions. All she heard were unintelligible mumblings that made her chest vibrate.

How long this went on she didn’t know, but eventually she gave them an answer that made her fall into a memory she didn’t remember having. She told them of her ability to touch the aether, and the moment she did, she recalled her time in the hills to the east of Kohor. She’d bled herself. She’d cut her arm and bled onto the censer away from the others so that she could try to enter the aether as she’d done when fleeing Andakhara.

It was an embarrassment, what she’d done, a betrayal of the Matri and their ways, but she’d already touched the aether once, and they’d been cut off from Ishkyna and Mileva for so long. She had to learn more.

Kneeling over the smell of her own burning blood, she’d felt herself fall into the aether as she had so many times in the drowning chamber of Palotza Galostina. It had startled her, but once she was there, she felt perfectly at ease. Her only fear was that she would be drawn back too soon.

She cast herself outward, searching for the other Matri, and eventually she’d felt the first tentative touch of another. It was Ishkyna, and she felt stronger than Atiana would have guessed.